chapter 5

But everybody left her in the end. Milko had been the only one who ever stayed, but now he'd been kidnapped even he too might disappear forever. A terrifying picture came into Sally's mind, of the terrible sea carrying Milko and Pippa out on its grey stormy water towards the rocks. Her bottom lip quivered and large, salty tears spilled down her cheeks.

Despite his bad mood (the rain was easing now, but Billy could hear a steady dripping from somewhere, which meant yet another repair job) the janitor's soft heart melted. Having had several run-ins with them in the past, normally he wouldn't have hesitated to dob in the rough, foul-mouthed Phillips boys but the little girl was different. Billy had never seen her before but he'd heard on the grapevine that the Fletchers were fostering a kid who'd had both her parents die in a boating accident. This kid looked so lost and lonely with her big eyes and air of vulnerability that she just had to be little Sally. It was good if she was making friends, albeit with the Phillips brothers. Billy wasn't going to be the one to tear that friendship away from her; heaven only knew, the poor mite had lost enough in this life already.

"Okay, I'm going to let y'all off with a warning this time," he said gruffly. "But if I ever catch any of you here again..." Billy glared sternly, which sent shivers of fear down Sally's spine, but which both Scott and Kane found highly amusing though they were careful not to show it. "Now get out of my sight - fast! - before I go and change my mind!"

Sally would have scurried off in the direction of home except, with a silent nod to each other, the Phillips, fooling Billy into thinking he was right and all three were best mates, grabbed hold of her arms, Sally having already slipped the matches into her pocket (Kane's tough guy act a little spoilt by the fact his head barely reached her elbow) and marched her quickly off to a quiet corner.

"Twenty dollars!" Scotty reminded her. "By school Monday, jerk, or Milko carks it!"

"I'll get it," Sally promised breathlessly.

"You better!" Scotty brought his face close to the little girl's, leaving poor Sally shaking with fear.

She watched Scott and Milko turning the corner together. Milko had his hands in his pockets and his head down so she couldn't tell if he was really scared or only pretending to be. Sally couldn't make up her mind if he was in cahoots with Kane and Scott or not. She was still thinking about it when someone suddenly tapped her arm, making her jump.

"Listen!" Kane hissed. "I've been thinkin'. I just wanna make sure we got the right bloke. 'Cos it ain't fair if we've kidnapped the wrong guy now, is it? I mean, what if he's got a twin or somethin'? What does your mate Milko look like?"

Sally thought for a moment. Very few people had ever asked the question. Lynn asked once, but had only smiled and said Sally was sweet when Sally told her, and Sally had a feeling, not for the first time, that the older girl thought Sally was just a cute bub. A couple of kids at the Home had asked, but only to tease her. And the lady with the briefcase, who came to the Home specially to sit at the desk and give Sally cards so she could guess what the shapes meant, had asked heaps of questions, like what did Milko look like and did Sally believe Milko was a real person? (Milko, who was sitting in the chair next to Sally, hadn't liked that one bit and had glared and coughed - so much so that he eventually had a coughing fit - but the lady still hadn't taken any notice of him.)

Sally looked sadly towards the corner that Milko had disappeared round. She knew Milko didn't have a twin. He would have told her if he had, even though he hadn't been talking very much to anyone lately. Unfortunately, little Sally was very honest and not very worldly and it didn't occur to her for a second that she could lie and win him back.

"Well, he's very tall and he's very pale," she sighed sadly. "And he always wears white shorts, white shirt and white trainers, and he usually wears a red hat but he's wearing a black hat today because he's very unhappy."

Kane sighed too. "Yup. We got Milko alright," he nodded.

Damn! He'd been half hoping they hadn't while half hoping they had. Kane had mixed feelings over the kidnap. It was cool having an invisible mate and it was cool having a patsy to nick for them. But the sookiness always kicked in at the most awkward times. Kane had felt very uncomfortable again when Sally cried. It reminded him of when Dad treated Mum rough and made her cry and Kane hated him for it.

"But don't ya worry, we'll take good care of him. If we don't kill him," he added, anxious to reassure. He sighed again. Milko was sorted, but he didn't know what the hell to do about the other problem.

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Steven sat on a sheltered part of the beach, staring out into the distance, while the last of the rain trickled down over the cliffs. Normally on a Friday he would have been with a gang of mates, playing footie or surfing or watching the chicks. But sometimes he needed to be totally by himself. To think. He drew his knees up to his chin and re-lived the night he had cheered while his parents were being burnt to death.

"Someone could be hurt," Gazza's Mum said.

He and Gazza laughed. Nobody would be hurt.

"Steven, the fire..."

He scooped up a handful of wet, crumbling sand and let it run through his fingers. That was how quickly Mum and Dad were gone. How quickly his life turned around.

Gazza, Andy and Jonno, his three best mates whom he'd grown up with, gone to school with, were long gone now too. Not dead, of course, just living out their own lives, far, far away from foster families and Summer Bay. He had nothing in common with Gazza, Andy and Jonno anymore. They still lived in a world where you got cash from your olds for birthdays, did your homework assignment (or pretended to do your homework assignment) in your own bedroom in comfort while watching TV, threw your school bag and school tie down anywhere the minute you got in, yelling what was for tea. Being fostered was different. All of a sudden nothing was how it used to be.

Your foster brother, snoring like an express train pulling into a station every night, stopped you from sleeping, even when you pressed a pillow against your ears to drown out the sound and pictured happy little scenarios of pressing the pillow against Frank's face and the blissful silence that would follow. Thanks to Carly and Lynn, half the time you couldn't get in the bathroom and, when you finally did, it was full of steam and flowery scents that choked you, and lipstick, brushes, mascara, shampoo and fancy bottles took up all the space on the bathroom shelves so that there was barely any room to put down even one small black comb but - sheesh! - knock anything over under penalty of death! Worst of all, you had a loopy little sister who thought she had an invisible friend and who shuffled round walls, counting under her breath, because it was some kind of magic spell that kept everyone safe.

But he had more in common with Sally than anyone else.

It was always Sally and Steven who forgot and left their school bags for someone to trip over; who got orange juice or felt tip pen on their uniform; who crashed into furniture because they were too busy running to look where they were going. Except Sally hadn't laughed and joked while her Mum and Dad died.

Steven gulped back a sob and looked swiftly round in alarm, but there were only the sea birds to see the tears shining on his face. And to hear him crying, so quiet and still, that even the smallest finally became bold enough to land and peck round the nearby rockpool.

Steven half watched as more and more birds swooped, fluttering and fighting in their search for food after the deluge of rain, vainly trying to blink back the tears that, now they'd started, refused to stop falling. Sometimes he felt as mixed up as Sally must be. The only difference was that Steven dealt with the death of his parents by surrounding himself with crowds of mates and being as loud as possible while Sally locked herself in her own little world.

It had been a shock when, while they were tidying up, Pippa remarked she'd have to stitch the rag doll and told him about when her grandmother had knitted it for her. Pippa's doll! Steven had almost blurted out there and then that he'd thought Mrs Martha belonged to Sally, stopping himself just in time and not being brave enough to admit to being behind the damage. But it was a timely wake-up call. What the hell was happening to him?

Stevo would never have picked on little kids, no matter how angry he was. Stevo would have been the first to wade in and stop it. Steven drew a deep, tear-filled breath. It wasn't going to be easy, she drove him crazy with all this stupid Milko business, but maybe it was time he got Sally onside.

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"And what the hell you doin', havin' all these cosy chats with the freak like ya's're ------- bezzie mates?" Scott demanded.

Kane looked at Milko, who'd just put down his knife and fork, and back at Scotty. "I had to check we kidnapped the right guy."

Scotty lashed out. He couldn't help himself. Sometimes his saint-like patience with his kid bro wore so thin that a mere hefty kick or fierce shove just wouldn't do. He picked up the nearest object, a cracked and dirty dinner plate (the next-last-but-two of the blue-ribbon-patterned set, Mr and Mrs Phillips already being extremely fond of hurling crockery at each other and their eldest son having inherited their talent) and crashed it down on his little brother's head. Kane staggered backwards, sucking in a breath and dizzy from the pain, picking blood-spattered pieces of plate out of his hair and, impressing himself with his sensitive regard to hygiene, tossing them down on the kitchen table where, he reckoned, Mum wouldn't slip and would find it heaps easier to clean them up from than the floor. After all, she could just get the old sweeping brush and sweep them off the table straight into the garbo bin.

Their mother's screams and an accompanying thudding were echoing round the house at that moment but neither was taking much notice. Dad bashed her pretty much every night. Scott had become immune to it all while Kane, following his older brother's advice on previous similar occasions, was trying hard not to listen.

Their olds being busy was the reason Scott and Kane had tonight cooked their own supper of burnt toast and "scrambled" eggs (Scott had meant to fry the eggs but the frying pan and eggs had apparently had ideas of their own and Kane had been too preoccupied with trying to figure out how the toaster switched off to help).

"When will ya get it into ya thick skull?" Scotty yelled, "We couldn't ------- well have exactly kidnapped the wrong guy because Milko doesn't ------- well exist!"

Kane glanced up at Milko, who, although he didn't look very happy to be called a non-entity, only shrugged. Kane guessed he was used to being ignored.

"Yeh, well, I ------- well know we got the right guy 'cos he's invisible and he looks like what the dork said and he ate the invisible steak, chips and berries!" Kane yelled back, while making sure the table was between him and Scott and the door was near enough to flee through because Scotty looked about to do his block. "But what are we gonna do about the other stuff?"

"What ------- other stuff?" Scott swung his fist dangerously. He couldn't take much more of these weird conversations. They were making his head feel like jelly. He was gonna really lay into his bro soon as he caught hold of him. But what his little brother said next stopped him dead in his tracks.

"The invisible green dragon that keeps followin' us," Kane replied worriedly.